


Whisky Blues

by IsolationShepherd



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Abby listening, Blues, F/M, Kabby, Marcus playing guitar, Marcus singing, Music, Original Song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2019-01-20 09:07:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12429567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IsolationShepherd/pseuds/IsolationShepherd
Summary: Abby watches Marcus as he plays guitar and sings. Inspired by @marcuskanebeard, and Henry Ian Cusick jamming with The 100 cast.Set during Season 3 between episodes 2 and 3.





	Whisky Blues

The slide down is always a gradual one. It happens slowly, in increments, so that you’re barely aware of any change, and if you do happen to notice a difference, that the colours are fading, the sounds deadening, there’s time to get used to it. In that way, you can travel a long distance from yourself before you ever look up and see the woman you used to be standing on the mountaintop waving at you as you lie in the valley beneath. You must get binoculars out to see the details of her face she is so far away. She has a bright smile, but there’s a darkness in her eyes, a foreshadowing of what is to come. Yes, the way down is easy. It’s the way back up that is hard.

Abby is halfway through her fourth drink of the night, and these are the thoughts that are swirling through her mind. She’s sitting on the floor of the Mess, her back against the cold steel of the counter. She’s not quite drunk, but she’s on her way. She’s at the stage where every thought has a pinprick clarity, that perfect moment where the lens on the camera is turned just a fraction more and the view comes into focus, sharp and bright. It won’t last long, but while it does, she thinks about how she got to this point, the cause and effect of a hundred small actions that have led to her hiding in the Mess in the darkest hours of what seems like the longest night of the year. 

Marcus had returned from the search that afternoon, his mood dark. He’d come straight to Abby’s room to tell her that Clarke was alive, and they would get her back. His words were meant to be comforting, the touch of his hand on Abby’s designed to transmit reassurance, and hope. Instead she had sensed his fear in the cold sweat of his palm, and the slight tremor in his fingers he tried to hide by putting his other hand beneath hers so that she was held in a grip that was too tight, too forced. She had disentangled herself when he didn’t seem to be letting go, and he had turned to look at the map while he delivered the news that her daughter was at the mercy of the Ice Nation, pointing out the possible hiding places so he didn’t have to look Abby in the eyes. That made her nervous, because there was something he wasn’t telling her, and she’d snapped at him. He’d leant forward, brown eyes starting to blaze, and then he’d checked himself, and that had made her rage rise beyond the confines of her reason and pour out into the ears of the man who had caused her to erupt into anger more than any other. He was sparing her, when she didn’t need to be spared. Abby Griffin was a woman who liked to face the truth head on, no matter how ugly or painful it was. Marcus was used to her eruptions now, though, and was learning how to manage her, and he’d let her vent her frustrations before putting a steadier hand on her shoulder and saying, ‘let me tell you everything,’ in a calm voice that soothed her despite her best efforts to resist him.

Abby shifts her position, stretching her long legs out in front of her, bending her toes towards her knees to stretch her tibialis anterior muscles before she gets a cramp. Her thigh is aching where the drill entered it and she rubs it to ease the pain. It’s been three months and the wound has healed well. When it’s cold, like tonight, the chill creeps into her bones, a dull throb settling into and over her leg like a river fog. It’s everywhere and nowhere in particular. Rubbing it only partially helps because so much of the ache seems to be outside of herself. She takes a long sip of the whisky and her skin warms as her blood vessels dilate, pumping the blood closer to the surface. It feels wonderful, even though she knows she’s losing core body heat so she can obtain the feeling. Life is one big trade off. What’s the risk of a little hypothermia when you can have the peace and warmth alcohol brings? It’s a balance, and sometimes you get it right, and other times you twist in the wind because the rope is a foot too short to safely reach the ground.

She’d made such a miscalculation a few months earlier, when she’d armed Bellamy and Finn and sent them out to find Clarke and the rest of the kids. She takes another sip, and through her clear eyes she sees the line that lies unbending between that action and the moment Marcus told her Clarke was a captive of the Grounders. It is her fault that Finn had a gun, her fault that Lexa couldn’t trust Skaikru when the stakes were at their highest, her fault that Clarke pulled the lever and annihilated the Mountain Men, her fault that her daughter couldn’t live with that decision, her fault that she’s now at the mercy of the most ruthless of the Grounder nations. No wonder Marcus couldn’t face her when he gave her the news. He knows it’s her fault too. _We have to answer for our sins, Abby._ Well now she was paying, and the price was her daughter.

She drains her cup and reaches across to the bottle to pour another, the liquid decanting in huge gulps of promised oblivion. A noise startles her, causing her to spill a little over the hand holding the cup and she sets the bottle down quietly, and licks the spirit off her hand while she listens and tries to pinpoint the source. It’s a door closing, and footsteps crossing the metal floor, heavy, booted feet, with a determined stride. She presses herself against the counter, draws her knees up to make herself as small and invisible as possible. She doesn’t want to be caught drinking alone in the Mess at three in the morning. The footsteps come closer, and stop on the other side of the counter. There’s a scraping as a bottle is dragged across the surface, and a pop as a cork is pulled out. At least three glugs of liquid exit the bottle, so if it’s a whisky, it’s a large one. The cork squeaks as it is squeezed back into the neck of the bottle, and Abby hears the intruder sigh as they take a long draft from their cup. It’s a very male sigh, a long, deep exhale full of tiredness and frustration. She has heard it many times before, usually directed at her. She can’t be certain, but it seems as though Marcus has had the same idea. What is prompting his late-night drinking? The same concerns as her? She should reveal herself, but then he might want to talk, and the only conversation Abby wants is with her cup of whisky. She is debating what to do when she hears him swallow another large gulp and then he puts the cup down and moves away.

Abby relaxes. He just wants a nightcap, something to help him sleep perhaps, not that it will do that. He might fall asleep quickly but he’ll wake again after a couple of hours, tired and cranky. She knows the consequences of a late-night drink all too well. She waits to hear the door close behind him but instead there’s another scraping sound as a chair is dragged across the floor and then there’s the unmistakable twang of a guitar string. Whoever the intruder is it can’t be Marcus. He doesn’t play guitar. Abby knows everything about him, it’s the curse of living in a small community, hemmed in on every side so that every step and misstep, every inhale and exhale is known and commented upon by everyone else. Another twang and then a discordant thrum as fingers brush across the fret. A further twang of a single string and there’s a squeak as a tuning peg is turned and the pitch of the note struck rises as the tension is increased. The same happens for the rest of the strings until a final thrum across the fret reveals a perfect harmony. Abby places her cup on the floor with the precision of a surgeon so as not to make any noise, and gets onto her hands and knees so she can crawl to the end of the counter and look beyond it. It _is_ Marcus sitting on a chair in the centre of the room, an acoustic guitar resting on his lap, the fingers of his left hand poised on the fret, the thumb of his right hand hovering over the soundhole. Abby is astonished. She waits for him to start strumming the guitar before she sits up, reaching back for her drink before making herself comfortable at the end of the counter. She feels more exposed here but she doesn’t think he can see her, not even if he turns and looks straight at her. She’s hidden in the shadows.

He’s playing a blues song. It’s slow, hesitant. There are pauses while he finds the right chords with his fingers, and presses down firmly on the strings before picking the tune with his thumb and moving on to the next chord. His head is down, his eyes focused on his hands. He makes it through a few bars and then repeats and the second time around he is faster, more confident. A third time and he has found his rhythm, his fingers flying more easily over the strings, his thumb and forefingers pinching out the melody. Abby doesn’t listen to music often. Her quarters on the Ark rang with the sounds of football matches and children squabbling. To relax, she and Jake watched old black and white movies with huskily-voiced women and cynical men. Marcus had loved classical music, even as a young man, and she had spent many hours as a teenager listening to it with him, nodding as though she had understood what he was talking about as he described how Bach’s Goldberg Variations were proof of the infinitesimal ways in which the same basic structure or argument can be interpreted by different people, depending on how the notes, or words, are arranged. Abby had feigned interest because when she was fourteen all she had wanted in the world was for Marcus Kane to notice her, and even back then he was so _focused_ , so _single-minded_ that the only way to get him to acknowledge her existence was to be interested in the same things he was. Then he would talk to her for hours, playing her different compositions, showing her how the composers used the instruments to represent themes, or characters. She had listened, and nodded, and waited for him to _see_ her finally, to look at her and realise that sitting in front of him, with her long, golden-brown hair and intelligent eyes, was the girl of his dreams. Understanding would dawn in those dark brown eyes, and he would lean forward, and kiss her, and his lips would be warm and soft. At fourteen, that was as far as Abby got in her fantasies about Marcus. He had never kissed her, struggled to even look her in the eyes most of the time. Maybe there was something about her budding sexuality that disturbed him, Abby didn’t know. She had given up eventually, and moved on to the man she would marry and make a life with. She had assumed Marcus was gay, or just not interested in women or sex, until Cece had disabused her of that notion with a detailed description of her nights with him that left Abby more confused than ever about the enigma that was Marcus Kane. She laughs softly as she remembers those teenage yearnings. Over the following years he had committed that single-mindedness to a cause Abby couldn’t agree with and in the end, she thought she’d had a lucky escape, until now.

As she listens to him play the passage over and again until he has it perfect, she looks down at her cup of whisky, brings it to her nose and inhales. The scent of damp earth fills her nostrils, wet moss growing over dark pools of peaty water. It’s a rich scent. It reminds her of Marcus when he returns from a long day roaming the woods and pastures looking for Clarke. Sweaty and warm from exertion, his cheeks red and his breaths shallow, he marches in to give her the latest update and they stand together in front of the board, plotting the next day’s excursion. She breathes him in; she can’t help it. He smells of earth and sky and dirt and _life_. So different now to how he was back on the Ark. She sometimes wondered if he bathed in antiseptic, so _clean_ he always seemed to be, everything pressed and neat and contained. Now, his hair is longer and the waves he used to tame with hair gel are left to tumble into his eyes. He has a beard, something that would have been unheard of for the old Marcus. It’s a little rough, untrimmed and uneven in places. He doesn’t seem to notice, or care, just lets it roam free across his face, like an untamed beast. It’s attractive. Sexy, even. And now here he is, in a final sweeping away of his former self, swapping the austere classical music that so defined him on the Ark for a blues rhythm that is wandering, abandoned, with only a loose frame holding it together. Abby doesn’t know if the song he is playing is a famous one or something he has written but it’s beautiful, haunting. His eyes are closed now. He is in harmony with his instrument and he doesn’t need to see what his hands are doing to hit the notes perfectly.

The tune slides down the fret and then ascends as though it is a lament, the plaintive cry of someone who is lost in the darkness. In the middle of the Mess, in the dead of night, the rhythm sinks into Abby’s whisky-soaked veins, expanding them, moving through her body until it reaches her heart, which grows larger to cope with the added volume. She can feel it swell, and she sighs to let some of the pain that comes with it escape. She closes her eyes so she can concentrate on the music and then Marcus starts to sing.

     Baby, do you want me to beg you

     Get on my hands and knees?

     I’m not that kind of man

     No, I’m not that kind of man

His voice is softer than she would have expected, higher than his speaking voice. The final word of each line is spoken on a breath, an exhale of air that stretches the sound out, and leaves the note hanging, expectant, reaching for the next word. Abby is holding her breath as she too waits for the next line. She is mesmerised, so much so that she forgets she is holding her cup and the clatter of it hitting the floor shocks her and makes her gasp. Marcus stops playing, and there’s silence for a moment while he is processing what the sound could be and Abby is holding herself still in the vain hope he won’t pinpoint where it has come from. She watches as his head turns to where she is sitting, and he squints into the shadows.

“Who’s there?”

His question is sharp, precise. He’s annoyed, and confused. Abby contemplates keeping quiet but she’s not eight years old and caught with her hand in the cookie jar. She’s an adult and she must face the consequences.

“It’s me. Abby.”

“Abby? What?” He shakes his head, then puts his guitar on the floor and stands up, coming over to where she is half-sprawled against the counter, her hand resting in a pool of whisky. He looks down at her, a frown of disapproval on his face. She _is_ eight years old, and her hand is well and truly in the cookie jar.

“I’m sorry, Marcus.”

“What are you doing here? Are you spying on me?”

“Spying on you? I was here first!”

“Have you been hiding here all this time?”

“I wasn’t hiding. I was sitting here minding my own business, and then you came in and I didn’t want to disturb you.”

“Didn’t want to disturb me or you didn’t want me to disturb you?” He looks at the half-empty bottle of whisky, the cup laying on its side, its contents a spreading stain of her guilt on the floor.

Abby bristles under his stern gaze. It’s times like these, when he’s looking at her like he doesn’t know who she is, that she thinks he hasn’t journeyed too far from the old Marcus. He _has_ to have an opinion, _has_ to let her know about it. He doesn’t need to speak. That look in his eye, the narrowing of his lids, the constriction of his pupils into pin pricks, as though he wants to shut out as much of the sight of her as he can, speaks of his displeasure. It raises the hackles on the back of her neck every time, warms her blood further so that she is primed and ready for a fight. It’s a strategy for war they’ve developed over the last twenty years, and sometimes he wins and sometimes she does. Abby is ready, her hands are curling into fists as adrenaline chases the whisky through her veins. Then he surprises her by reaching down to grasp her clenched hand and she unfurls her fingers and lets him pull her up so that she is standing on unsteady feet facing him. He bends down again and collects the bottle and the cup and sets them on the counter behind her. He looks at her then, a shy smile on his face.

“What did you think?”

She is taken aback at the directness of his question. She tries to put into words the thoughts and feelings that had overwhelmed her while she was listening to him play, but the lens on the camera has shifted a little, and she’s out of focus. Finding the right word or phrase is like wading through honey, so she keeps it simple.

“It was beautiful.”

Marcus nods, a half smile flashing across his lips. “Thank you.”

“Do you have more?”

“Do you want to hear more?”

“Yes. I do.”

“I’ve never played or sung in front of anyone before.”

“It’s only me.”

He nods again. “Yes. It’s only you.” He frowns again, and sighs, and then he takes her hand and leads her to the centre of the mess, pulling a chair with him and spinning it so that it rests at right angles to his own. He sits down and picks up the guitar and Abby sits as well, her hands resting primly in her lap because she doesn’t know what else to do with them. She is nervous, as though it is her heart that is about to be revealed in song, not his. He looks straight ahead and she drops her gaze so that he won’t feel so scrutinized. He starts to play, makes a few mistakes, laughs and says _sorry_ and then starts again. This time he is more confident, and sails through the first verse with no mistakes. Abby risks a glance at him. His eyes are shut. He’s probably trying to pretend she’s not there, to make it easier to play. The rhythm of the first part is familiar to her now that she’s heard it a few times.

     Baby, do you want me to beg you

     Get on my hands and knees?

     I’m not that kind of man

     No, I’m not that kind of man

Then there’s a bridge, filled with those notes that slide up and down the fret, aching chords of sadness and desperation. Marcus screws his face up as he concentrates on getting the notes perfect. His entire body is in movement even though he’s sitting on a chair. Head shaking from side to side, feet tapping, body swaying as the music takes him over. The second verse is new, and he sings it softly, so that Abby has to lean forward to make out the words.

     Baby, when you really look at me

     Do you see what you’ve done?

     Left a bruise on my soul

     Yes, left a bruise on my soul

He repeats the bridge but Abby is barely listening to the music. The words are consuming her thoughts. Who is he singing about? Who left a bruise on his soul, and when? She wants to ask him but even though he’s invited her to listen when he could have turned and walked away, she feels like an intruder. This was meant to be a private moment for him and she has invaded it, pulling back the curtain so he has no choice but to display himself to her. She should feel guilty, but instead all she wants to know is if these are _his_ words, _his_ feelings, because the heart of Marcus Kane is an uncommon beast, rarely seen. She realises that he has stopped playing and when she refocuses her eyes he is looking at her, watching her stare back at him.

“Where were you?” he asks.

Abby shakes her head. “Did you write that?”

He nods, shrugs his shoulders. “That’s all I have so far.”

“It’s breath-taking, Marcus. All those years studying classical music have paid off.”

He smiles. “You remember that?”

“Of course. You were obsessed.”

“Focused, perhaps.”

“Always.”

Marcus laughs softly. “Yes.”

He seems amenable, open. His eyes are soft and he has a gentle smile on his face. Abby decides to ask him the question that won’t stop running through her mind. She wants to know the answer, but at the same time she doesn’t. What if it is her? What if it is _not_ her? Both outcomes are problematic, and both are making her pulse race. She is fourteen again, waiting to know if he has seen her, finally. These thoughts are a surprise, because although she cares for him, worries about him, _missed_ him when he was captured in TonDC, she has not considered what that means. She has ignored the signs, dismissed the symptoms. He is Marcus. Her enemy. Her friend. She regards him coolly, as though she has no real interest in the answer to her question.

“Who is she?”

Marcus shakes his head, glances away before looking back at her. “No one. A ghost from the past.”

“She hurt you?”

“She didn’t mean to. She didn’t know.”

“What?”

“How I felt.”

“Oh.”

She is emboldened by his answer, and the whisky is having its effect now, making her brave, reckless. She feels the next words form in the depths of her heart and when they rise up and out of her mouth she does nothing to stop them.

“Do you still love her?”

Marcus stands, holding the guitar in front of him so that it is between them, like a shield. “I think it’s time for bed, Abby. You don’t want to regret this in the morning.” He indicates the whisky bottle with his hand but his eyes haven’t left hers.

“I have many regrets, Marcus.”

“We all do.” He looks at her for a moment, and then turns towards the door.

She’s not ready to let him go. There is unfinished business between them, she can feel its presence, the ghost from the past he sang about. “What are yours?”

He turns back, his eyes dark, the pupils so large now he must be able to see her with perfect clarity.

“I will finish the song, and then you will know.”

He gives her a brief nod, and then he turns and walks out of the door without looking back. Abby puts a hand to her heart, which is racing. Too much whisky. Too much everything tonight. She waits a moment before following him out of the door. She feels lighter, somehow, than she did when she first came in. The woman on the mountaintop is still waving, but now it is a beckoning, an invitation to start the ascent, and Abby will begin it tomorrow, when she is sober, and more sure of her footing.

 


End file.
